The Hill-Brown Theory of the Moons Motion: Its Coming-to-be and Short-lived Ascendancy (1877-1984) (Sources and Studies in the History of Mathematics and Physical Sciences)

This book, in three parts, describes threephases in the developmentof the modern theory and calculation of the Moon’s motion—the last of which, in 1984, resulted in the transfer in the responsibilityof producing lunartables from the Nautical Almanac Office in Washington, D.C., to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA—definitively ending an era. The mathematical, philosophical, and historical interest in the analytic solution to the lunar problem using the Hill–Brown method still engagescelestial mechanicians and is the primary focus of this work.
Part I explains the crisis in lunar theory in the 1870s that led G.W. Hill to lay anew foundationfor an analytic solution, a preliminary orbit he called the “variational curve.” Part II is devoted to E.W. Brown’s completion of the new theory as a series of successive perturbations ofHill’svariational curve. Part IIIdescribes the revolutionary developments in time-measurement and the determination of Earth-Moon and Earth-planetdistances that led to the retirement of the Hill–Brown theory in 1984.
The book uses some calculus and differential equations, but the text is largely understandable without advanced knowledge in these areas. Amateurs of astronomy, as well as instructors and scholars of the general history of science, would find this book of significant interest.